What are the best ways to fix 404 errors?
-
I recently changed the url of my main blog and now have about 100 404 errors. I did a redirect from the old url to the new one however still have errors.
1. Should I do a 301 redirect from each old blog post url to the new blog post url?
2. Should I just delete the old blog post (url) and rewrite the blog post?
I"m not concerned about links to the old posts as a lot of them do not have many links.
-
Thanks Andy. I made this change........domain.com/blue-blog to domain.com/blog using a rewriterule. It seemed to work.
-
I did change the structure domain.com/blue-blog to domain.com/blog. So I did a rewrite rule in the .htaccess file. That fixed a lot of things however there are still 100 or so 404's. They are old blog posts and not really that important.
-
As tom says 404 errors are not the end of the world.
if you are concerned then as long as the relative urls have remained the same and the root directory is all that has changes a 301 in bulk should work, though if you've changed categories or something it may not work so well as a single entity and 100 would be the way to go.
Something that you should do, if you've not already, is within webmaster tools make sure you tell Google you've changed your url (configuration > change address) - it also has a mini guide on the steps you should be taking, including to register your new domain on webmaster tools.
But again, as tom says, if it's not destroying the user experience and isn't a huge annoyance for visitors don't worry too much about it.
--
Just for your reference a full url redirect (aka changing say abc.com to abc.net - moving all directories and urls in one go) would look like
RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.abc.net
-
Are we talking about a structural change (i.e. domain.com/blog to domain.com/myblog) or a TLD change (domain.com to domain2.com)? If you kept the same blog structure otherwise, I would write a .htaccess file to make sure you just blanket redirect all URLs. It's easy to do that way but not everyone has access to that.
I recommend 301s just because they avoid the sloppiness problem. I mean, you wrote the content for people to find, right? If they hit a 404 it just frustrates them. It doesn't matter whether or not you need the SEO, I like it when a 301 takes me where I really need to go. it shows someone cared enough to make sure I could get to what they had done. It's a pride of authorship thing.
-
Hi Nathan
If you're not concerned about passing the links/link equity of the old posts to a new page, or if you don't think there are any users visiting the URL directly, then I would simply leave the page as a 404 error.
404s are a natural part of the course and Google recognises this - check out this webmaster blog post. 100 404s isn't an awful lot, so I wouldn't worry about them unless they're interrupting a user journey (which you'll be able to check in analytics).
If you really want to get rid of them, then a 301 would be the way to go in my opinion. 100 301s will not slow down your .htaccess file by any noticeable margin. But overall, I'd let the 404s be 404s.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Multiple Markups on The Same Page - Best Solution?
Hi there! I have a website that is build in react javascript, and I'm trying to use markup on my pages. They are mostly articles about general topics with common questions (about the topic), and for most articles I would like to use two markups: article markup + FAQ Markup ( for the questions in the article) article markup + how-to markup Can I do this or will Google get confused? Since I have two @type at the same time, for example @type": "FAQPage" and "@type": "Article". How should I think? I'm using https://schema.dev/ right now. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Leowa0 -
Brightcove SEO Best Practices?
My company has decided to go with Brightcove as a video platform so we can better monetize all of the video content we create and better customize the experience as well. We have a pretty decent YouTube presence, and I won't let them stop using that because it would totally alienate us from part of our audience. So I was hoping someone could help me with the following: Are we able to keep videos hosted on YouTube as well as Brightcove without any risk of duplicate content? If we use the Brightcove player to embed videos in our on-site content, are we hindering potential organic search visibility? On the embeds, it's looking like it's using an iframe in our content (https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/sativa-indica-and-hybrid-whats-the-difference-between-cannabis-ty) - We're using a Brightcove WP plugin for the embed, but I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on a better way to implement/if this is even an issue at all. Are there any other general best practices/insights anyone has working with this platform? I found this article on their site, but I was wondering if there was anything else I should consider. Thank you in advance for any insights/answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidkaralisjr0 -
404 Errors with my RSS Feed/sitemap
In my google webmasters I just started getting 404 errors that I'm not sure how to redirect. I'm getting quite a few that are ending in /feed/ for instance /nyc-accident-injury/feed/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jsmythd
contact-us-thank-you/feed/ and then also a problem with my sitemap I guess? With /site-map/?postsort=tags The domain is pulversthompson.com0 -
How do I use old websites to best effect?
I own a couple of old sites with DA of 15 and 17 which don't really rank for anything, as well as my main site which as DA of 29. Can I forward these domains to my main site to increase the DA of my main site. Alternatively is there any other way of making use of these sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benacuity0 -
Recovering from Programmers Error
Hey Everybody! Last year one of my bigger sites hit a snaffu. I was getting about 300k + hits a day from google, and then, when a developper released an update with a robots.txt file that basically blocked google from the entire site. We didn't notice the bug until a few days later, but by then, it was already too late. My google traffic dropped to 30k a day and I've been having the hardest time coming back ever since. As a matter of fact, hundreds of sites that were aggregating my content started outranking me for my own terms. For over a year, I've been working on building what I lost back and everything seemed to be coming together. I was back at 100k+ hits a day Until today... My developpers repeated the exact same error as last year. They blocked google from crawling my site for over 5 days and now I'm down to 10k se hits a day. My question : Has anyone encountered this problem before and what did you do to come back?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0 -
Robots.txt 404 problem
I've just set up a wordpress site with a hosting company who only allow you to install your wordpress site in http://www.myurl.com/folder as opposed to the root folder. I now have the problem that the robots.txt file only works in http://www.myurl./com/folder/robots.txt Of course google is looking for it at http://www.myurl.com/robots.txt and returning a 404 error. How can I get around this? Is there a way to tell google in webmaster tools to use a different path to locate it? I'm stumped?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
301 vs. 404
If a listing on a website is no longer available to display is it better to resolve to a 301 redirect or use a 404? I know from an SEO point of view a 301 will pass on the link value, but is that as valuable as saying tto the user hey that page is no lonoger available try something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
HTTP Errors in Webmaster Tools
We recently added a 301 redirect from our non-www domain to the www version. As a result, we now have tons of HTTP errors (403s to be exact) in Webmaster Tools. They're all from over a month ago, but they still show up. How can we fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss0